Chuck Schumer Has a Spending Problem

Washington, D.C. – Chuck Schumer has a problem. And it's not the kind that can be brought under control through medication, therapy or membership in a twelve-step program.

Schumer is a compulsive spender. He has to spend and use other people's money when he does it. In vast amounts. He doesn't care where it comes from or if it has to be borrowed. He's got an agenda that keeps him busy buying votes to keep his party in power by using your money and mine.

It's disgraceful but all too few people see it that way. What is student loan forgiveness but a program to buy the voters of young people too stupid to realize an esoteric college major wouldn't be the pathway to a high-paying Wall Street job?

Run through the Democrat's agenda and find the ways their spending is directed at their voters. It's blatant, yet almost no one calls them on it. If Schumer were still an ambulance-chasing lawyer in Brooklyn, it would be his problem. But, because he's the majority leader of the United States Senate, it's a problem for every one of us taxpayers. Income redistribution, a longtime dream of the left is finally happening, a dollar at a time, spending bill by spending bill.

Congress is now in a lame-duck session. That's the period in between an election and the start of a new Congress when defeated and retiring members still get to vote on important legislation is, by Schumer's design, going to be a spending spree. Schumer's admitted more than once he wants to use it to pass a major spending bill covering everything the government funds for the next year.

If he succeeds, the new House leadership will have nothing to say about spending, freeing it up to investigate Hunter Biden's laptop and other things meaningful to the Trumpist base of the GOP but which will have little impact on the nation's future.

What needs to happen is for the leader of the opposition, Kentucky's Sen. Mitch McConnell, to keep at least 41 of the 49 members of the Senate GOP Conference united to block Schumer's year-long spending proposal from going anywhere.

The alternative, which many senators, including Arizona's newly independent Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin, the maverick Democrat from West Virginia, could accept, would be a temporary funding bill that only lasts a few months and does not block spending cuts made mandatory by the Obama-era PAYGO law Congress has routinely waived since it was enacted.

If they take this tack, they'll have the public's backing. FreedomWorks, a group that deals with economic and regulatory issues, reports a majority of voters in a survey it recently commissioned said they would support pushing the funding of the federal government out of “the lame duck session” and into the next Congress.

“Rather than pass an Omnibus spending bill right away,” the group said in a release, 62% of all voters, including two-thirds of Republicans and a majority of Democrats, wanted the new Congress to deal with most of the spending issues yet to be resolved. An astounding 73% said that, in their view, the proposed Schumer-led spending plan would be wasteful and favorable to special interests rather than address the problems the general public faces, like inflation.

There are other ways to go. More spending will only spark another inflationary spiral at a time when, say many economists, it looks like the rapid month-over-month increases are finally coming to an end.

“The worst thing we can do for the economy is continue this spending spree, especially with inflation so high,” retired Ways and Means GOP Leader Rep. Kevin Brady said about priorities for the lame duck.

Rather than adopt a measure that locks Schumer's overspending in — “Democrats spent $3 trillion more on top of the budget this session,” he said — Brady would rather see Congress focus on ending the labor shortage by triggering growth in the economy. The stakes, as he sees them, are high.

“Overall personal debt is the highest it's been in 15 years over the last few months. We're seeing people skipping meals, digging into their savings, and delaying retirement, which is really troubling. Can you imagine working 30 or 40 years waiting for that day that you can finally retire, and you've got to delay it because prices are just so high?” he asked.

As Brady noted in his interview, lame ducks can be “very unpredictable.” It is possible some good policy may emerge from it — but highly unlikely because Schumer's addiction to spending will get in the way. Despite what the election of 2022 suggests, his party's running out of votes because it's allowing the fringe left to chase out those like Sinema and Manchin who at one time could credibly claim to be moderates. They still are, given how far to the left the Democrats have moved, but it would be a mistake to think of them as centrists.

The Democrats are fractured and fragmenting. It's been an ongoing process that's been getting harder and harder to keep behind closed doors. That's why they're reducing to buying votes with special interest spending. Ideological affinity is no longer enough by itself, if it ever was, to hold the coalition that put Joe Biden and others in his party into office. They expect to reap the spoils of their efforts which, thanks to the COVID-era emergency spending and despite the way Bideninflation has reduced the value of those dollars are now at levels the average New Dealer could ever dream.

That's the danger. It is possible to spend America into oblivion. It wouldn't be the first-time prosperity led to the downfall of a nation, a state or an empire. The burdens that must be shouldered in such situations require safeguards that protect the public treasury. Without those in place, without leaders who understand that funds are not limitless, default and ruin remain a possible outcome. Schumer's addiction to spending is pushing America further down the road to bankruptcy. He needs help and, if he won't take it, he must be stopped. Blocking a year-long Omnibus in the lame duck and forcing spending cuts through existing PAYGO rules is a down payment on our future economic survival.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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